The whole thing
looked nice and straight and like it would all fit -
which was insane because I still didn't have more than
half the parts, I had no idea about major areas, I had
just thrown caution (and any kind of planning into the
wind) and started knocking out a bike. The
qualifications for any and all elements - I had to like
them. Period.

The stance of this
frame is large and aggressive - completely unlike the
hardtail that had occupied this workspace a few hours
before. We had done an emotional 180 degree turn as the
actual plan began to boil. It was the ghost of an idea,
then the wisp of an idea, then the hint of idea and then
before you knew it - it was a REAL idea with substance,
purpose and planning - all rolled in to one!

Fast forward a couple
of weeks and you can see we've stayed true to the idea.
What idea? You bellow? Simple - I was going to take the
fat tire "heaviness" of the wide tire bikes and join it
together with the styling and soul that was the skinny
chopper of the late 60's / early 70's. Crazy ? You bet,
I was, in fact, going to attempt to build a bike that
made a fat ass look cool and skinny. It was going to be
a metal illusion with so many visual clues to the 60's &
early 70's that the fact that it REALLY was a fat tire
bike would be totally forgotten and lost on the viewer

Yeah, that's some fat
ass staring at you - but look at what's beginning to
emerge from around the sides of the bike! Could that be
a set of 50's style bullet taillights lost in the
abundance that is the back fender? Could that be a
silver snake's head poking off a jockey stick sent at
absurd angles winging out of the transmission? That
sissy bar - it's classic, but in a fat meets thin kinda
way - besides, I hear that he's not going to
actually use that one, that is just a rough template to
be given to a metalworker who actually knows what's
going on and isn't blinded by insane, rambling
philosophies and merely wants to know if the width of
the metal will hold the bend through years of bungee
cords and sleeping bags and hot, sweaty female backs.

The Snake
Bike...
Those days were gone for ever. I had to let them go. I had to
own up to something called degenerative disk disease which
basically causes the gaps between your spine to slowly get less
and less until the wiring that runs alongside of this human
fat-bob gets endlessly pinched in a shower of pain sparks that
you leave behind you, scattering down the night road out of the
open station wagon window as your wife tries to drive you to the
hospital and keep your head in the barf bucket at the same time.
The substance coming out of you has an inhuman smell and is the
result of a bad mixture of pain killers and premature withdrawal
from some VERY evil medication used to keep you out of what
you're actually feeling. It's brown and thick and has the
consistency of mucus and once you smell it, you'll never be able
to forget the smell that all at once stands for pain, blood,
fear and some basic part of your immortality that just rotted
and died. This points to the irrefutable fact that you too, will
now do the same thing. You will, YOU will (not some vague,
nameless "other" person) will actually produce some horrible
smelling brown stomach bile that is a cross between pee, shit
and mucus and will roll over and just fucking die.

Not this week, or next week or even a number of weeks that you
can count - but certainly a finite number of weeks. Not like
before - when that thought could be pushed away with a puff of
sweet hillside weed or crystalline powder produced from some
friends baggy jean pocket.

Even as I write this I smell the smell of that bucket bile and
know that I have truly smelled the horrible reek of death. It is
the worst of all smells - especially when it's coming from
inside you.